Not sure how many people were suffering from it, but Google Photos became adamant about pushing ads. I couldn’t find a replacement in Google Store which wasn’t doing the same. Downloaded F Droid, used alternative to website to find apps, downloaded and now the problem is solved. You can use Google Files to install the F Droid apk to start your journey of degoogling. I’m still using some proprietary apps which work with the Android UI such as Google’s Wallet but everything I could replace I did (unless I’d inconvenience myself like with Contacts). The open source apps have much better UIs and don’t bombard me with ads or other stuff the big corp wants to push like their accounts. I wish I had done it sooner and this post was made to encourage other people to do that. I tried Aurora Store, but Google doesn’t let me login. It tells me it would give me a popup to type a number into, but the popup never comes. Anyone knows what app pushes the popup? Is Aurora a full replacement for Play Store or do I need to have both installed?
It’s not much easier than people think, as much as I’d like that to be true.
2 of my digital banks work only through apps, so browser is not an option. Same for some dating apps. I would also need to give up on a handful of proprietary apps or give in to inferior open source alternatives. And I don’t even play games, but I imagine the open source selection is really scarce in comparison. Replacing most apps might be easy, replacing all of them can be a headache.